Freshmen swimmers prove to be up to the challenge
Illini women’s swim team competes at the ARC pool. October 8, 2016.
October 24, 2016
The Illinois swim and dive team freshmen showed they could compete at a Division I level this weekend when Friday’s meet against Michigan State and Marshall came down to the last heat.
The Illini trailed by three before entering the final event of the meet: the 200-yard freestyle relay.
The combination of freshmen Kristen Anderson and Megan Vuong and seniors Audrey Rodawig and Gabbie Stecker sealed the deal for the Illini, winning the heat with a time of one minute and 35 seconds.
Both Illinois and Michigan State had comfortable leads over Marshall at the time of the relay, resulting in a Marshall third-place finish.
Illinois took only four of the first 10 events.
Get The Daily Illini in your inbox!
“We got off to a little bit of a slow start,” Illinois head coach Sue Novitsky said. “It was the first meet, so we had to get ourselves going. But once we got the momentum going, it was a tremendous fight all the way through.”
Once Anderson won the 100-yard free style event at the start of the second half of the meet, the Illini began to take control. The team won six of the remaining eight events, resulting in a 167-133 victory over Marshall and a 152-148 victory over Michigan State.
The team returned to action the next day to face off against Southern Illinois and Illinois State.
This time, the Illini got themselves off to a much better start than they did the day before, taking five of the first eight events while sophomore Madeline Kuhn finished second in the 3-meter dive with a score of 224.40, helping the Illinois to a fast start in the meet.
Freshmen swimmers Vuong, Anderson and Monica Guyett once again displayed strong performances in their individual events and relays.
“Coming in, I didn’t think I’d be making an impact like I am, even knowing I was going to be important to the team, so it’s always a good feeling,” Anderson said. “Yesterday, when me and Audrey [Rodawig] went one and two in the 100 Free [style event], it was a really good feeling knowing that it wasn’t just me up there.”
There were also several strong performances from the upperclassmen for the Illini. Junior Sam Stratford won the 400-yard IM with a time of 4:25.71, seven seconds faster than SIU’s Samantha Parsons, who finished second in the event.
Senior Gabbie Stecker finished first in the 200-yard butterfly event with a time of 2:04.82, which was four seconds faster than SIU’s Audrey Snyder who finished second in the event.
The Illini begin a two month road trip starting in Evanston, Illinois on Oct. 29 against Northwestern and Rutgers.
“We’re going up against two Big Ten teams next week, so we got to be ready to go,” Novtisky said. “We can be living in the moment right now, but come next week, we have to go back to work.”
@ETFisher24
